Crossfire or SLi?

[kahlos]

Well with both SLI and crossfire the performence is pritty much equal. So that's about 5% less than double performence. Another thing is that they both split the bandwidth of a PCI 16x slot so if you have two cards they only get PCI 8x each so this bottlenecks faster cards like the 7800GTX and X1800XT if put together. They get bottlenecked because they are fast cards and would probably use the whole PCI 16x bandwidth on there own so putting two together hardly increase's performence. Saying this card's like the 6600GT or X800GTO would no way use the whole PCI 16x so there wouldn't be much bottlenecking on the bandwidth. So in otherwords it's worth it for putting two cheaper, slower cards together to make the performence of an expensive fast card but not 2 fast ones.

Pro's for SLI : It has nice in computer connector. It's more mature so there are more motherboards which support SLI.

Con's for SLI : It can only get the 2x extra performence if the game supports SLI (although many games would probably release patch's so that the game support's SLI). The 2 cards have to be pritty much the same (but due to latest advancements you can have cards from differen't manfactures but they still have to be the same make i.e. 6600GT from gigabite and a 6600GT from MSI but not a 6800GT and a 6600GT)

Pro's for Crossfire : You get the 5% less than double performence on all games (the game doesn't have to support it although if it does support it then it get's more performence). You can mix and match differen't cards from differen't manfacturers (although there is a small performence hit).

Con's for Crossfire : It's quite new so not many motherboards support it yet (and the ATI xpress 200 chipset which ATI made for crossfire doesn't support SATA 300) and due to this motherboards that do support it are more expensive. There is a messy outside case adaptor which gets in the way. One of the graphics cards has to be a crossfire mastercard which at the moment is more expensive then regular cards.

So i think that Crossfire is better than SLI due to not needing a patch to work properly and that you can mix differen't cards. Another good thing is at the moment the best price to performence card is sapphire's X800GTO2 which is ATI. Which you can unlock to get the performence of a card that cost's twice as much! So I would get a sapphire X800GTO2 and a crossfire motherboard. Then unlock the X800GTO2 use that until it starts to be too slow. Then buy a mastercard (which will be cheaper then) and run them in crossfire to be able to once again play games at high detail. Oh and another thing good about SLI and crossfire is that you can have loads of monitors running at once and if you get 2 256mb cards you get a total of 512mb.

 

[003]

with sli or crossfire if you have 2 cards with 256mb that dosn't see it as 512mb, it sees it as 2 cards with 256mb each. i still think that even getting two cheaper cards is not as good as getting one monster card, because with the upcoming physx card, if you have sli or crossfire, and you have an audigy or x0fi sound card, there probably wont be any room for the physx card. so I plan on (if I get the money) getting either a 512mb 7800gtx or one of those overclocked x1800xts, and then getting an x-fi fatal1ty sound card, and then a physx card.

 

[kahlos]

Well from what i have heard and looked up it seems to be better to get two cheaper cards to equal a monster card as the price would probably be $200 (£100) cheaper. Also SLI and crossfire are evolving technology's who knows what might happen in the future. Maybe some amazing thing that allows the cards to each do a 1600x1200 resalution and have a total of 3200x2400 resalution. And with the 256 + 256 = 512 thing I just ment as in you would have more peformence with two 256mb memory modules than a 512mb. Like dual channel mode on a motherboard having two 512 mb in dual channel is faster than a single 1GB module.

 

[ilovesocks]

ok well then you guys have changed my mind alot.... and i thank you for that... but i play CS and Source whats a good card out that will run both at 100 fps fine with no lagg at all?? i heard the x800xl 512mb version from fatal1ty is the shit.. true or no?

Depends on the resolution, quality, etc. but the 6800GS should run it nicely, especially if you overclock it. Look at the Half-Life 2 benchmarks here.